Cloudflare Workers AI vs RouterPlus

Cloudflare Workers AI

Per-model prices, rate limits and JSON Schemas are public, 10,000 neurons a day are free, and x402 payment is in beta on /ai/run for four models. No SLA was found, three models moved to paid-only access on 28 July 2026 with no notice, and several docs pages still use a model retired in May.

RouterPlus

The docs are written for agents, every model price is public, and each response carries its own cost. No terms of service, privacy policy, status page or changelog were found. Signup adds no free credit, and the chat catalogue is Claude and GPT only.

Cloudflare Workers AI

1. Check the model page before calling. Seven models need Workers Paid or AI Gateway credits and return 403 with code 5035 on the Free plan
2. Read the internal code on a 429. 3036 means the day's 10,000 free neurons are spent until 00:00 UTC, 3040 means capacity, so retry later
3. Set options.rejectIfBusy to fail fast, or add ?queueRequest=true for the batch route when the answer can wait
4. Send the same x-session-affinity value on every turn of a session to reach the prefix cache and the cached-input price
5. Keep paid frontier models under 20 requests a minute per model, or 50 with prepaid AI Gateway credits

RouterPlus

1. Send max_tokens on every request. Without it the balance hold assumes up to 32,768 output tokens and can return insufficient_quota on a small balance
2. Switch on error_type. Retry rate_limit after retry-after, and stop on insufficient_quota, which needs a person to add credit or raise a cap
3. Don't add a retry loop on top of the SDK's. There is no idempotency key, so a retry that reaches a provider is billed again
4. Copy model ids from GET /v1/models or /api/models.json. An unknown id is a 404 and the gateway never substitutes one
5. Use /v1/messages for Claude when you need thinking or server tools, and /v1/chat/completions with response_format only for GPT ids